RENSSELAERVILLE — Barbara Blum, a trailblazing and lifelong champion for the developmentally disabled who as social services commissioner helped New York transform its prison-like mental health institutions by implementing the landmark Willowbrook Consent Decree, died Saturday of natural causes. She was 82.

At a time when squalid, overcrowded facilities were just beginning to gain statewide attention, Blum, the mother of a severely autistic son, emerged as a powerful voice that helped usher the state into an era of markedly more humane care for the disabled. After her retirement, Blum continued to fight for change where she felt it was needed, including in the mental health system she helped overhaul. Even into her 80s, Blum wrote persuasive editorials and authored a blog.

"My 40 plus years in the field of human services (have) shown me that government can work and have remarkable results," Blum wrote in a 2010 article in the Times Union. "If something is broken, it once worked."

Blum was a self-made pioneer in social service, abruptly shifting from insurance company actuary to advocate for the disabled after the birth of her disabled son, Jonathan. The mother of four swiftly made a name for herself by co-founding the Association for Mentally Ill Children in New York City in 1960. After overseeing several New York City mental health and children's services departments, Blum was promoted to director of the metropolitan office of the state Board of Social Welfare in 1974.

Her career peaked in 1977, when Gov. Hugh Carey appointed her commissioner of the Department of Social Services, a post she held until 1982. A confidant to Carey and other political heavyweights such as former New York City Mayor John Lindsay, Blum was asked for guidance on social service issues by politicians in New York and Washington, D.C., up until the time of her death. Blum, however, will forever be linked to the Willowbrook decree, a watershed mandate that called for the state to do away with filthy overcrowded facilities for disabled children in favor of smaller, more intimate group homes.

More Information

The Willowbrook School, a state-run institution for disabled children on Staten Island, was exposed in the mid-1960s and early 1970s as a hellish warehouse for the disabled after a visit by Sen. Robert Kennedy, a series of articles by the Staten Island Advance newspaper and investigative work by Geraldo Rivera for a local ABC affiliate. Children wearing filthy clothes were confined in dirty, dank cells that were "less comfortable and cheerful than the cages in which we put animals in a zoo," Kennedy said at the time. Instances of physical and sexual abuse were reported. Around that same time, Blum herself toured Willowbrook.

"It was just stunningly bad. I remember her just being overwhelmed," Blum's husband of 61 years, Robert Blum, told the Times Union on Wednesday. "People were eating out of troughs. No one was being cared for. It was just awful."

The state was sued in a class-action lawsuit by relatives of Willowbrook's residents in 1972. After a settlement was reached in 1975, one of Blum's first tasks as commissioner was to administer the court order, which called for the majority of the facility's 3,000 residents to be placed in group homes around the state.

"It had such a profound affect on all of us," Robert Blum said. "Years later, people would see her and say 'Mrs. Blum, I lived in Willowbrook and you brought me out of it.' "

Barbara Bennett Blum was born in the small riverside town of Beaver, Pa. The daughter of an accountant, Blum majored in mathematics at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, where she met her husband. When the couple's second son, Jonathan, was diagnosed with autism, Blum decided she would not return to her work as an actuary for an insurance company.

"It morphed her focus," her son Stephen said. "It was an incredible struggle."

As DSS commissioner, Blum split her time between New York City and a two-bedroom apartment on Chestnut Street in Albany. Her children said they were raised on the road, as Blum often took them with her to meetings with government officials. Some of Blum's children watched her testify before Congress. Those sessions were a lesson in leadership, they said.

"She was a real consensus builder," said Blum's youngest daughter, Jennifer. "She could honor everyone else's views while having this remarkable ability to express her own and no one ever resented her. It was the art of persuasion."

Blum and her husband had lived in Rensselaerville since 1999. Blum is survived by her husband, Robert, their children Stephen, Jonathan, Thomas and Jennifer and five grandchildren. Services for Blum were held Wednesday afternoon at Rensselaerville Presbyterian Church.

Blum's death comes as the state is set to form a new protective agency to investigate cases of neglect against the disabled. That legislation, proposed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, comes a year after a scathing series of reports in The New York Times revealed the horrific mistreatment some residents at mental health facilities in the state received. Shortly after the death of Gov. Carey in August 2011, Blum wrote about the Times' findings in a blog entry titled, "A Legacy in Jeopardy"

"The developmentally disabled require humane care," Blum wrote. "The unacceptable conditions that currently exist in certain state-operated facilities upstate is a reminder of what can happen to the most vulnerable among us. It is also a reminder that reform can occur and proper care and services can be provided."